Lecture given on October 30th, 1966, by Riley Crabb

At the present time we have optimistic estimates from officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that we may be sending Astronauts to the Moon in 1968. That’s only two years away! We already have physical contact with the Moon with Surveyor I, with excellent pictures of the barren and lifeless surface.

What next? As we turn our attention to the planets of the solar system and beyond those to the next larger system, the Zodiac, are beings in these larger systems turning their attention on us? I think so. Let us assume that the universe is aware of us, even as we are becoming increasingly aware of it!

We have awe-inspiring photos of the earth from hundreds of miles out. Surveyor sent back one photo of the earth as seen from the Moon! These are New Age pictures. They begin a new cycle of human unfoldment. If you want a date for the beginning of the Aquarian Age, let that be it, Aug 23, 1966, the day our Lunar Orbiter satellite sent back a picture of the earth from the Moon. This new perspective of our little school room in the solar system is activating slumbering centers of our creativity. This new, higher form of energy will make itself increasingly evident for the next forty years.

If you know your astrology you know that Aquarius is an air sign. Is it any wonder that we are having such fantastic aerial developments? Air represents the finer, lighter forces in Nature. What planet rules the Zodiacal sign of Aquarius? Uranus. You-ran-us! Vast and revolutionary changes are focused through Uranus; for it makes all things new! The key words for this revolution in consciousness that is now upon us are brotherhood, cooperation and friendship. Can you imagine anything more revolutionary on this earth than to demand of all men and women that we get along with each other without fighting?

But this is the pressure for the New Age brought to us from the Sun behind the sun by the Visitors from outer space. The message transmitted by the Spacecraft from beyond the Sun — some of them — is that we must cooperate. We must move in harmonious orbits even as the suns, stars and planets move in harmonious orbits. Personal love we know and enjoy. The symbol for this in our solar system has always been Venus. But Uranus is the higher octave of Venus. Its subtle influence demands of us that we raise our personal affection for a few people to the heights of impersonal, universal love.

AN EXPANSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

This is like asking us to hoist ourselves by our bootstraps. We cannot do it alone. There is help, plenty of it. This new Aquarian energy striking us through Uranus is quickening and sharpening our minds. This encourages us to welcome the new, to strike out in new directions. The earth has already been explored; so the New Age impulse forces us to explore ourselves even as the astronauts reach out in thought toward new objectives beyond the Moon.

Rather a dizzying prospect isn’t it? But doesn’t this rapid expansion in consciousness invite us, men of earth, to play a new role in the unfolding cosmic drama of the Aquarian age? I think so. Heretofore you and I have been content to think of ourselves as citizens of the United States of America — or some other nation. But the orbiting satellites, Russian and American, race across dozens of national frontiers every moment at 17,500 miles an hour. This is gradually forcing us to think of ourselves as citizens of earth.

But an even more radical revolution in consciousness will be forced on us by the outward trips beyond the Moon to the planets. We will be claiming citizenship in the solar system, perhaps even the cosmos! Here in America we know that citizenship bestows wonderful privileges; but we are also trained to accept the responsibilities of citizenship. If there were no sense of responsibility there would be no privilege. Now the New Age demands of us, the Visitors from beyond the sun demand of us, that we be responsible citizens of the solar system. With that solar or even cosmic responsibility will come privileges beyond our wildest dreams.

I have friends whose fondest dream is to take a vacation trip to Hawaii. They work for it and save their money. Others, like Mrs. Crabb and myself are looking forward, some day, to a trip around the world as a vacation reward. But wouldn’t it be even more wonderful to be able to dream, and plan, and save for a vacation trip to Mars or Venus? Dare I suggest a trip outside the solar system in our time. Will some of us be making inter-stellar voyages to Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, the Sun behind our sun? I think so. But before we can propose these ideas at the popular level — and not just to a convention of the elect here at the Claremont — we must be taught to realize that our thoughts are of greater consequence than our actions. The public at large must be taught that we are not alone in the universe. The earth is one of a family of planets in the solar system. We must unify ourselves by inter-weaving our thoughts with those of our fellow humans on Mars, Venus and the other planets.

This expansion of consciousness began with a vengeance this year, 1966, with the persistent appearance of Flying Saucers all over the country; and most important of all, the national press, TV and radio are finally treating the sightings as straight news stories, factual observations by reliable people. Most recent, and hair-raising, is that two-part Flying Saucer story in the Oct. 4th and Oct. 18th issues of Look Magazine. If you haven’t, get them and read them!

This “Aboard A Flying Saucer” story by John G. Fuller in Look Magazine is dramatic and national confirmation of what we in Borderland Sciences Research Associates were told 18 years ago! Back in 1948, Lao Tse of our Inner Circle, told us:

“You ask why the Flying Saucers are here in large numbers? I shall tell you. Always, when a civilization, a culture has reached its height and is destined to collapse, the Ethereans have appeared in numbers. They come to make an examination and a final record, for their own knowledge, of the status of that civilization — somewhat as you might do with disappearing tribes and races. And it is true also that they have been alerted and disturbed by your release of atomic energies.”

So, in these recent issues of Look Magazine we have Fuller telling us of the personal experiences of Barney and Betty Hill in 1961. Their car was stopped on a New Hampshire highway. They were hypnotized. They were taken aboard a nearby Flying Saucer for a most thorough physical examination. Then they were given the post-hypnotic suggestion that the whole experience would be forgotten. Finally, they were taken back to their car and sent on their way, by these scientific Visitors from some unnamed planet in some unknown solar system. Barney and Betty were treated humanely, but as impersonally and cooly as if they had been animals in some experimental farm.

But the experience of 1961 was too disturbing to remain dormant in their subconscious. They finally went to a psychiatrist for help a couple of years later. Under hypnotic regression, with Dr. Simon’s expert help, the whole traumatic experience was brought to full consciousness. The part that concerns us and today’s subject of Spacecraft from Beyond the Sun is the following exchange between Betty Hill and the Leader of the alien spacecraft:

“And so then I said. . . I knew he wasn’t from the earth, and I wanted to know where he did come from. And he asked me if I knew anything about the universe. And I told him, no, I know practically nothing. . . And he went across the room and pulled out a map, and he asks me had I ever seen a map like this before. . . There all these dots on it, scattered all over it. Some were little, just pin-points. And others were big as a nickle. And there were lines. . . going from one dot to another. And there was one big circle, and it had a lot of lines coming out from it. A lot of lines going to another circle quite close, but not as big. And these were heavy lines. And I asked him what they meant. And he said that the heavy lines were trade routes. The other lines, the solid lines were places they went occasionally. And he said the broken lines were expeditions. . . And I asked him where was his home port, and he said: Where are you on the map? I looked and laughed and said I don’t know. So he said: If you don’t know where you are, then there isn’t any point of my telling where I am from. And he put the map away. . . “

Tragic, isn’t it, that we’re all so ill-informed? It hasn’t been too important in the past, to most of us, where our earth is in relation to other sun systems; but I suppose this will be required of every world citizen of the New Age. We do have one ancient and honorable road map of the heavens. This is the Tree of Life of our Western Mystery Tradition, to which we will refer later.

HOW TO GET THE HELL OFF THE EARTH!

Thousands of advanced humans have used the Tree of Life to map out a safe escape from the earth, and a safe return; but it was a well-kept secret in the Mystery Schools of Atlantis, in Egypt, in the Holy Land and down through Europe and America of the present day. Now the demands of the space age will make it public knowledge. If we are to take our place as a welcome member of the family of planets in the solar system, we must know where we are, not only in the solar system but in the next larger family of suns, the Zodiac. As we move from Pisces into Aquarius the pressures of this new region in space will demand it of us.

Oh, you won’t necessarily be going in a material space ship! These New Age developments won’t be limited to physical achievements alone. Oh no. The Apollo trips to the Moon, the manned excursion to Mars are only preludes to personal explorations of the higher dimensions of the mind and heart!

You aren’t going to free yourself from the earth by loading your mind down with physical facts. We could spend hours here detailing the monumental plans of the space engineers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, until the lower mind staggers to exhaustion with the overload. No. The Aquarian stimulus is opening our higher minds. We hunger for information that only the spiritual world can provide.

True, the astronomical picture of the universe is stimulating, but what can the material-minded astronomer tell you of how it got here and who made it? The scientist has failed to establish a living relationship between ourselves and the universal order! As Theodore Heline has said recently, “The heart is left cold, the inner life undernourished. We need sustenance on deeper levels.” And he reminds us of the profound observations of Sir Francis Bacon, now one of the advanced men, “men beyond mankind”, who are helping to lead us into the New Age.

I am a Baconian Heretic. I am one of the growing number of people who believe that Francis Bacon wrote the great Plays under the pen name of William Shakespeare. But bless you, that was only one of many pen names used by this journalistic genius. Others were: T. Bright, Edmund Spenser, Burton, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Ben Jonson and – believe it or not — the Man in the Moon!

Young Francis Bacon was frustrated by the “barrenness of academic knowledge” while at Cambridge in 1573 and 1574. Years later he took occasion to deride the fruitless pursuit of wisdom in books when he wrote the drama, “Love’s Labor Lost”. There he has Biron remark:

Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun,
That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks;
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others’ books.
These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Too much to know is to know naught but fame;
And every godfather can give a name.

And so it is with the present Gemini program and the coming Apollo trips to the Moon. Our knowledge of the earth and its immediate space environment is increasing tremendously, but where is the wisdom to translate this knowledge into a better world? It certainly isn’t in the encyclopedias of information accumulating at NASA headquarters in Houston, Texas. These “books of base authority” cannot satisfy our thirst for treasures of the spirit.

We who study the Mysteries, the Ancient Wisdom, know that the Astronauts are bound to have spiritual experiences while in orbital flight. In the sensory deprivation of deep space the bonds of the flesh are loosened. Life yearns to return to the Father’s House, it’s real home. This change of consciousness has long been known to high altitude pilots as “the breakoff”. But because of the materialistic concepts of the space scientists on the ground, and of the men who administer the space program, the Astronauts are very reluctant to discuss these treasures of personal awakening when they return to earth.

We have recently learned that Astronaut Scott Carpenter was one who “opened” and saw through the Veil while his Mercury capsule orbited the earth. The whole panorama of creation was spread before him, in both its good and its evil aspects. He learned by direct perception that space — so-called empty space — is peopled with intelligent beings, some of human type, some non-human. The trouble was that he apparently found it difficult to re-focus on his earthly responsibilities when it came time to prepare for re-entry during his third orbit. He made several operational errors and, as I recall, missed the landing target by a couple of hundred miles.

Most of us have to go through a long period of conscious preparation and conditioning before we are granted the kind of spiritual experience Scott Carpenter had. He was given a grandstand view of the problems that vex most of us. Once we have such a revelation of the deeper mysteries of our own being, and of the universe, no materialistic approach to life will ever satisfy us again. There is bred in us a divine discontent. I suggest that our space program is forcing a gradual but steady shift in our thoughts and feelings, away from physical, outer phenomena toward a much more satisfying inner reality.

Today’s priests are the scientists. They are leading the change away from matter to energy. This has been going on for years now. Has anyone here ever seen an atom, or a neutrino? Of course not!

The physicists, these “earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights”, are giving names to vibrations. They have reduced matter to energy, to the first creation, sound. In the beginning was the Word. To the high priests of the super-physical, space was still a vacuum full of nothing, 30 years ago. Now they speak glibly of the solar wind, great bursts of ionized particles — whatever the hell they are — streaming out from the sun in all directions and a deadly menace to warm human life as we know it, unless protected by a magnetic shield like the Van Allen belts, and an atmosphere. So physics has really become metaphysics but no self-respecting scientist will admit it.

METAPHYSICS IS A DIRTY WORD

In American laboratories what physicist would admit that he is studying metaphysics, or reincarnation, or karma? But his probings of energy will eventually lead him to these dogmas of occult science! For the physicist is looking for Causes, and Causes are Moral! There is right and wrong in the universe and an intelligent being is supposed to know the difference.

The problems of celestial navigation and the interplanetary trips even now being programmed in Houston are forcing space scientists and the astronomers to examine the stars more closely than they have ever done. Eventually their astronomy is going to become astrology. Yes, the “ancient and honorable science of the stars” is quite certain to be popular again. When earthly problems have threatened to overwhelm man he has always turned to the stars, to the constellations of the Zodiac, for guidance. Despite its boasted scientific attitude toward life, this civilization must do the same and the scientists are leading the way. Continued and close examination of the vibrations coming to us from the Pleiades, from the Great Bear, and from Sirius — not to mention other constellations — will eventually reveal an intelligence superimposed on the vibrations. Most of us don’t know it but we are locked in the grip of the 12 rays coming from the Zodiac. If we want more light shed on the mystery of being, this is where we’ll find it. One or two unorthodox radio astronomers have hazard the guess that certain invisible but detectable radio signals from deep space may be beamed signals for the guidance of Flying Saucers! I believe they are very close to the truth.

Excerpt from The Journal of Borderland Research, 1966

See Part II here.